


House of the Rising Sun

by alephthirteen



Category: Ancient Egyptian Religion, Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alex is the Enforcer, Dansen - Freeform, F/F, Kara Is the Madam, Mythology - Freeform, Reincarnation Makes Kara Purr, Shifters, So Many Hungry Gators in The Bayou After All, Strange Doings in the Dark Of Night, SuperCorp, The Clients Are Not Allowed to Hurt the Pretty Ones, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 10:49:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29367297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alephthirteen/pseuds/alephthirteen
Summary: Oh mother, tell your childrenNot to do what I have doneSpend your lives in sin and miseryIn the House of the Rising Sun---"You," Lillian snarls. "Will do nothing but what you're told, girl. You're lucky I got anything for you, with your..."She sniffs."Illness."Lillian puts a derringer to Lena's temple."Get dressed."---"The money?" Lillian inquires, with a classless hurry that she'd beat Lena for.Reaching into her coat, the stranger pulls out two stacks of bills and hands them to Lillian. Thousand dollar notes, Lena sees. They guessed that Lillian would nearly sprint to the bank and didn't want the hassle of changing bonds or gold for cash.---Lillian scowls."Do you let your..."She's snared on the term. Slave is no longer accurate, in any sense. Servant sticks in Lillian's throat too, because they stand side by side, not one ahead of the other."I am her partner," the stranger purrs. "Business partner."Partner in the business of lifting your skirts,Lena thinks.
Relationships: Alex Danvers/Kelly Olsen, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 15
Kudos: 94





	House of the Rising Sun

_Oh mother, tell your children  
Not to do what I have done  
Spend your lives in sin and misery  
In the House of the Rising Sun_

### Metropolis, 1885.

"You'll go. That's the end of it."

"Shall I call the solicitor, then?" Lena snarls. "Change papa's will? Last I heard, whores breed more than hange-"

Lillian's slap rings through the manor. Even Lex flinches, twisting his eyes away. She should care what happens—he's her brother—and she should support him in his little tryst with the Kent boy. She did, wholly and truly, and was making her own designs on the violet-eyed wife of the judge. No reason for her to sit lonely in the parlor, listening to the moans. Until Lex was caught. Until the whispers of 'sodomite' and 'fornicator' descended around the family like a cloud of ash.

Judge Kent sloughed off the talk. Accepted the task of Lex's arraignment without a whimper of protest. The men in the courtroom couldn't see it, they couldn't possibly. But Lena is made of thinner, tenderer stuff. Has to be. Passion is hidden for women like her, signaled secretly and buried deep. Which girl's eyes linger on her dress because she likes the cut and which linger because she wants her hands up the skirt? The tell is in a moment. Eyes catching hers just a bit too long. Pupils spreading like an inkblot on paper. Flushing a bit too red, too hot. Gaze flicking to Lena for just an instant when she thinks Lena won't catch her. Handshakes three heartbeats too long and ending in a trace of silken fingertips along the veins of her wrists.

Clark's chin jumped and his blue eyes bored a hole in the opposite wall, never meeting Lex's. Never risking the tears he kept plugged back.

Trial in a week. The Tessmacher bitch was jealous that Kent got what she didn't. Screamed rape and claimed that her son's death was strangling in the crib. Doctor Graves knows the thing was stillborn. Pulled it out himself while Lena watched, dreams of medical school crowding her brain till she couldn't take notes.

Rabble don't need the charges to be rational or plausible. They need blood. They need someone else punished for what they themselves do in their bedrooms.

Rape and murder are punishable by hanging and with sodomy in the mix, a conviction is all but certain.

Lillian needs bribe money, and she's already pawned the silver in faraway Boston. The only thing left of value is Lena's virginity. The offer went out through the smoky rooms of Metropolis' manors and the smoking closets just off the boardrooms of the titans of industry. Where the great men of society plot murder of the rest by overwork.

The letter came by courier. Perfumed with honeysuckle. Addressed to Lena herself, even though the offer was to Lillian. Hundred thousand dollars and transit to New Orleans. Max Lord upped his bid to two hundred. By some hidden spy, this stranger learned of it. Another letter. Her bid became three hundred thousand. On and on they chased, until the sneering coal baron decided Lillian's humiliation and Lena's tears weren't worth a million.

She shudders to think of this person. So wealthy and so depraved as to bid on Lena sight unseen from a thousand miles off? She'd rather hang with Lex.

"You," Lillian snarls. "Will do nothing but what you're told, girl. You're lucky I got anything for you, with your..."

She sniffs.

"Illness."

Lillian puts a derringer to Lena's temple.

"Get dressed."

As if called by name, the madness in Lena rises up, billowing outward from her spine like fire whipped by high winds. Lena tries to draw on it, focus it like a sailor focuses a telescope. She feels the fibers in Lillian's finger. The hard shapes of bone and the creak and strain of the tendons hinging them. Soft threads of veins and vessels. She knows it's possible. The rat she found in her bed is proof. It surprised her in the dark and somehow, by some devilish craft, she killed it. Took it apart and fell back to sleep.

The maid's shriek the next morning woke her. The brain had been peeled from the skull, spine and every delicate strand of nerve with it. The heart and vessels, still pumping faintly, laid out in a fan of red strings. Not one leak. The skeleton, clean and dry and still poised like it wanted to leap at Lena's throat. Six parts in all, nervous, skeletal, circulatory, digestive, skin and the rest of it. Precise as a surgeon's work and pretty as Gray's Anatomy, laid neatly on velvet blankets.

Lena's eyes were yellow, the maid told Lillian. Like hot brands. Devil's eyes, she muttered over and over. All Lena remembered is dreaming of castles, and forests, and swords and armor and sitting a throne passing sentence.

If only she knew _how_ she'd done it. If only the magic or whatever it is could be forced, she'd open up Lillian's hand, pull muscle from bone and bone from tendon. Take the gun and leave her mangled. She could be free, and Lillian would have felt a thousandth of the suffering she deserves.

"Not a twitch," Lillian warns.

"The last nine-tenths are payment on _delivery_ , mother."

Lillian chuckles.

"Bullet to the temple won't kill. Doubt she needs your brains."

_She?_

Lena's mind swirls, questions and thoughts and worries slipping away like a bathtub with the stopper pulled. She'd assumed some fat man, with a smelly gut and a greasy, unclean cock. But knowing a _woman_ bought her? Surely it'll be just as brutal; no one pays a million for skin and meat alone, but still. She'd be lying to herself and God if she didn't acknowledge a certain morbid curiosity.

The great brass hammers on the oak doors—styled after the hammers used by spike-drivers on the Luthor railroad—slam three times on the other side and the sound booms through the halls. Lillian smiles.

"Come along, girl."

Cruel fingers dig into her shoulders, and Lena finds herself steered forward into the parlor.

The door swings slowly open, despite all its great bulk and showy decorations of heavy brass and gold. In the sunlight spilling into the gloomy parlor it stands two women. One is a tall ginger in a men's trousers, shirt and jacket. Her hair is cut close and red as rust. She wears a planter's hat and carries a cane that looks to be made of steel. The pointed tip leaves no illusion of what it could be used for in a pinch, and neither does the skull shaped cap made of some darker alloy. Nickle, perhaps. If so, heavy enough to crack a skull. The eye-sockets wear pale rubies.

The other is a mulatto, with skin shiny and dark as toasted pecans. Her eyes are large and warm and set in a delicate face framed by straight hair. A wig, Lena realizes, seeing the wiry thatch of natural curls peeking out from the front. She's more traditional in her garb: a dress of linen dyed plum purple, trimmed with silver ribbons at the throat and the sleeves. The sleeves cling close to lean arms and the richest decorations are at the wrist where silver ribbons dance with crimson lace. The skirts are narrow, perhaps three layers at most, and with no decoration but a few pleats. They flare out after the curve of her hips, not before. What it lacks in luxury, it makes up in flattery of her lithe frame.

"Mister Danvers," Lillian croons, dipping into a nod. "Welcome."

Lena scoffs, earning a slap to the head that makes the ginger's eyebrow shoot up and makes her fingers flex and curl around the shaft of her cane. Her hands slide up the shaft to a midpoint where it's narrower and made to grip, and if Lillian didn't realize the truth of the stranger's sex, she knows a threat when she sees one.

"The money?" Lillian inquires, with a classless hurry that she'd beat Lena for.

Reaching into her coat, the stranger pulls out two stacks of bills and hands them to Lillian. Thousand dollar notes, Lena sees. They guessed that Lillian would nearly _sprint_ to the bank and didn't want the hassle of changing bonds or gold for cash. She snatches them like a magpie snatches a spoon and sets them on the small table that marks the door to the coat closet.

"I trust that's everything you need?"

"So she only owns that nightdress?" the mulatto asks, gesturing to Lena.

Lillian probably planned to mine her wardrobe for a few more bills.

"I thought as much."

She offers Lena her hand.

"Come, little one. Let's get you packed to go home."

Lillian scowls.

"Do you let your..."

She's snared on the term. Slave is no longer accurate, in any sense. Servant sticks in Lillian's throat too, because they stand side by side, not one ahead of the other and they're both tall and straight. Unbowed. Proud in their own skin.

"I am her partner," the stranger purrs. "Business partner."

 _Partner in the business of lifting your skirts,_ Lena thinks.

"Ah," Lillian huffs out.

"And I speak not only when spoken to but also when I have things to say. I'm told that speech separates humans," she jokes, turning her eyes on Lena.

"...from animals," she adds, looking to Lillian.

She may dread the deflowering to come, but Lena is charmed by this woman's humor.

"Third door on the left," Lena blurts out. "It's unlocked."

She blushes.

"I didn't pack."

She's treated to a brilliant smile.

"Naturally, dear. In your shoes, I wouldn't have been eager to by on my way either."

Lillian's hand raises again, like reflex. This time, the stranger's cane catches it. The head lands in Lillian's palm and there's a faint crack. The middle two metacarpals, Lena suspects. Lillian can't bite back her whine of pain. Her hand barely had time to twitch before the reprimand landed. The blow was quick as a shot and accurate as a sharpshooter and Lena's thankful. It passed her ear by half an inch and she doubts her skull would have fared much better.

"No," the ginger grunts.

Kelly lifts her skirts and hurries towards the stairs.

"Well?" she calls over her shoulder. "Come on!"

Upstairs, Lena's bedroom is pulled apart quickly and efficiently. A footman is summoned with a snap of the fingers and he brings one trunk, then another, then another. It's surprising. Lena thinks maybe Lex gave permission, or else they don't want to disobey the associate of someone who'd break Lillian's hand in her own home without fear of reprisal.

The woman's name is Kelly Olsen, and Alex is the other one. Alexandra, but between using only 'Alex Danvers' in the letter informing them of her impending arrival and her presentation, Lillian hadn't the creativity to realize that. Her mother is a doctor and Alex studied for it but hasn't sought the license.

Lena tries to help but besides her perfumes and scarves and the few pieces of jewelry she hid away, she has no idea how to pack any of this. Kelly does, fitting each item into the trunks without waste or roughness. Rather like a watchmaker fits gears together. So as she packs, Kelly talks for the both of them.

The crisscross of faint scars on Kelly's left hand _were_ from a master's cruelty, but she was so young she doesn't remember the blow. When she seven, a woman came to the plantation. A magnificent giantess in dark silks with her honeyed hair in great braids and eyes the sweet blue of forget-me-nots. It was the height of the war, the dark days before Louisiana fell. She spoke to the master, bought some honeycomb and a bale of rough cotton. Smiled at Kelly. Left. By winter, the crops had failed, and the masters had died, one after the other, from a sickness like consumption but clearly distinct. Her mother served in the house, and she said the blood they coughed up was black as tar and upon touching air, it formed strings and curled on itself like vines on a plant.

Shocking all, emancipation was in the master's will for every man, woman and child on the plantation. A change made the day before his death. The federal army was a few miles of swamp away, and some ran for that. Others waited, unsure. Running towards the arms of the Union Army carried the risk of capture as runaway slaves and fresh bondage, while the plantation offered familiarity. With the owners dead and the bank moving slowly on foreclosure, the place was theirs, for now.

Carriages arrived shortly and bundled them off to New Orleans. Frightened but free, they were deposited on the steps of a great white house and the giantess approached and introduced herself. Kara. She offered train fare to Omaha, where trains can be had to wherever. If they wanted to stay, room and board for services rendered. She took pains to explain that this meant honest trades, not service on one's back.

The Rising Sun, it's called. A brothel but also a sanctuary and to hear Kelly tell it, a family. The police and the judges stay away unless they're paying and pantsless. Something about the place, or the madam, terrifies them. Kelly, her mother Janey and her brother James stayed. Her mother mended clothes, and watched the children inevitably produced. She even cared for the girls when they were pregnant, or sick. The madam instructed her to spare nothing. If it was a Dr. Danvers touch, that was what the woman got. If the cure was some secret herb that no white fingers had ever plucked, Janey was to point the way to its growing place and it would be provided.

Treatment like that sounds far too good to be true but perhaps well maintained, healthy whores fetch a higher price. Lord knows the madam could have built ten factories for the sum she spent on Lena. There's more to the business than whoring. Has to be. The money spent on Lena could found a university, or pay off every congressman and senator in one swoop.

James worked carpentry at first, mending cabinets dented or scuffed by a whore's desperate fingernails as they passed the pain of too-rough clients into the wood. Before long, the delicacy with which he worked the wood and the carefulness of his eye made the Kara offer him another job. Photography. Kelly says that much of the business now is the sale of these secret, sinful photographs.

When she came of age, Kelly worked as assistant to Alex and later, she freely admits, her lover. This branch of conversation leads to her waxing poetic about the warmth of Alex's mouth and the skill of her fingers and to Kelly guessing Lena's own preferences which Lena affirms accidentally with a blush that burns her cheeks.

Lena hears so much about New Orleans she thinks she could paint it. Willow trees heavy with dew. Air thick and hot as steam, driving everyone inside to shadow. French and English spilling over each other in the streets. A dozen different pastries that sound sweet and fattening as sin itself, and crawfish, and smoked meats painted with spices grown from India to Haiti to Brazil. There's talk of voodoo practiced in the dark places where the slaves from the Caribbean put down roots, and of witches working in smoky parlors and butcher's shops. Vampires, Kelly chuckles, some even say vampires haunt the places between the streetlights on the new moon, gone before the first flicker of dawn.

She wonders if she should ask if anyone's ever heard of something like what happened to the rat, but decides against it. Kelly is telling gossip from her home, a place she clearly loves dearly, not indulging Lena. The memories are probably false anyway, hysteria bubbling over.

They came at noon and it's nearly dusk when they're done collecting the life Lena led into boxes and slinging them into the second carriage. Whether they mean to provide a life down there, or just sell her things once she's used up, Lena doesn't know and decides not to wonder or worry.

She gives Lex a long embrace, hoping she'll read of his acquittal or clemency, but if not, he needs to know grace from one person. One person needs to accept him, not merely forgive him.

Who better than Lena? They'll never see each other again, so let them part on this note.

The carriage is not large. It's comfortable, with amply padded benches and velvet curtains. The liquor inside is expensive and enticing to Lena's nose and her sizzling, unraveling nerves. She barely has to look at it before Alex hooks her fingers around a third tumbler and pours her a glass.

She was raised to be mannered. Proper. Ladylike. To snare one of the scions of Metropolis with her blush and her tittering laugh, keep his interest with a warm hole between her legs and birth some heirs. 

She swallows the whisky in one go, savoring the searing heat down her throat. She timidly holds out the glass and Alex tut-tuts before pouring her three more fingers.

"Sip this time. No need to drink yourself to death."

Lena sighs.

"Suppose someone else has plans for how I die. Return on investment and all."

Alex looks to Kelly, who looks back to Alex. Both look like Lena slipped into some dead language when she spoke. Kelly's warm hand lands on Lena's knee.

"Lena," she asks, even and soft. "What do you think is happening to you?"

She shrugs.

"Ridden a few times, tossed away when I'm too bruised. No one spends a million just to fuck a girl. To cut her up, or burn one end while fucking the other, or eat her flesh, maybe. But even that could be covered up with a few bribes. For this sort of price, there's something else to it."

Alex pinches her nose.

"Goddess' tits..."

She cocks her head at Lena.

"You're beautiful as they come. But she doesn't need to buy pretty girls. They come to us, from streets, or places worse than the Rising Sun. Get some rest. I'm sure she'll want you angry and sharp-tongued for dinner conversation," Alex jokes.

The idea that this Kara wants her for something more than a deviant, sticky death is comforting, and the sum spent certainly means its possible. Lena lets herself sink.

The cry of a locomotive wakes her. They're at the station and a huge burgundy-red locomotive leads five jet black coaches with silver flowers decorating door handles and window shutters sprawls in front of her. The middle three coaches are double-height. A boxcar of well-maintained, lacquered wood follows that and the signal car at the end is the same smoky burgundy steel as the engine. A broad shouldered Negro man of forty or fifty years is moving the huge trunks like a child moves blocks.

Alex waves to him.

"Evening, J'onn!"

He's wearing a smart jacket and slacks but not wearing a porter's hat or white gloves, and once again Lena finds herself unsure of The Rising Sun's politics. To take a forward-thinking view on race is not unheard of but these people almost _ignore_ it, challenging the rest of the world to do likewise. A man's eyes crawl across Kelly and she trembles under it. Alex tenses, ready to beat him down. He sees meat. Fair game, taken without fear that the King's men will care. Alex reacts like a knight whose queen had been insulted.

They board and with another shriek of caged power, the engine lumbers forward. Dining is at the back, followed only by the luggage. The tables and a small bar take up two-thirds and behind those J'onn has a comfortable sleeping compartment with a small desk and a standing wardrobe. Forward of that is the most marvelous thing Lena could hope for. A library. The shelves are packed in close, and the height of the unusual car is put to full use.  
The place is navigable only by turning sideways and climbing steep ladders. There are hundreds, maybe even one thousand volumes. A single table in the far front to read at, with drawers full of paper for notes, pens and ink.

Past that is a sleeping car, which Kelly is shuffling the last of her and Alex's things out of. Lena tries to stop her, but she chuckles that she isn't the sort to sneak into a library at all hours, but she thinks Lena _is_ and Lena's not in the mood to lie.

The world outside is pitch black, and she's spread books over the desk in Latin, Ancient Greek and several languages she does not recognize when Lena finally decides to shuffle to bed.

She's had a long day.

**Author's Note:**

> ##  [Want to see the posh stuff? Want to see future chapters early?](https://rb.gy/b1fjhr)
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